Asset visibility and Tracking is always a grey area for management in the hospitality industry. The number of assets deployed in a hotel is huge and the complex and frequent movement in the hospitality industry makes it even more challenging.
Nowadays the increasing number of hotels in the middle east adopting Asset Visibility and Tracking solutions, signals that the importance of real-time asset lists has got traction from management.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is leading the Asset Tracking market due to the easiness of reading the tags and auditing in the complex hospitality industry. The nature of the assets and usage by the guests make it difficult to use the traditional barcode technology in the segment. Today’s low-cost RFID tags make the return on investment (ROI) using RFID technology is more than the labour-intrinsic barcode technology auditing.
Advantages of RFID Technology in the Hospitality industry Asset Tracking
- Quick auditing: Asset auditing is a challenge in hospitality as it needs to be done when the room is vacant. The quick audit can happen only with RFID Technology due to the bulk scanning option available with RFID.
- Long term asset tags: Since the assets are used by the guests frequently there is a possibility of removing the asset tags from the assets hence not being able to track the identity of the asset. RFID tags can be placed on areas not visible to the public and are still readable by the reader without a line of sight. Hence unidentified assets are fewer compared to barcode technology.
- Zone based asset visibility: Fixed readers mounted at the entrance and exit points of different zones provide zone-based visibility of the assets if they are moved from one location to another.
- Quick decisions Instantly actionable data: the whereabouts of the assets and their conditions are instantly available on the dashboard for the management for quick decisions.
Conclusion
In the Middle East, UAE and Saudi Arabia are leading in implementing RFID-based Asset Tracking in Hospitality Industry. The bright outlook of the tourism and hospitality industry in the middle east is promising for RFID Asset Tracking in the region.